Gulf Wars

The Gulf Wars (1980-1991) were two wars fought in the Persian Gulf region of the Middle East by Iraq. The first war, the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) was between Iraq and the nascent Islamic republic of Iran, fought to forestall a possible exportation of Iran's revolutionary spirits to Shi'ites in Iraq; the second, the Gulf War (1990-1991), was directly caused by the first war, with Iraq seeking to repay its debts by adding Kuwait and its oil to their lands. In both wars, Iraq was defeated.

Kuwait
When Kuwait received its independence from Britain in 1961, Iraq renewed its historic claim to the country as its 19th province. Britain sent troops to guard the border. Kuwait later sided with Iraq in its war with Iran, as it too feared Iranian intentions in the region.

Iraq
In 1968 the nationalist Ba'ath Party took power in a coup. Saddam Hussein overthrew a Ba'ath predecessor to become president in 1979. Saddam brutally ruled this mainly Shi'a country through its governing Sunni minority. He also persecuted its Kurdish minority. He viewed the Iranian revolution with concern, as he feared it might spread to Iraq. Border disputes with Iran and Iraqi support  for Iranian separatist groups increased the tension between them.

Iran
In 1979, the corrupt pro-Western Shah of Iran was overthrown in a popular Islamic uprising that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Iran became the world's largest theocracy and a leading centre of Shi'a Islam, threatening not only Iraq, but the other Sunni kingdoms around the Gulf.

Wars
The pretext for Iraq's war against Iran, which began in 1980, was the disputed ownership of the Shatt al-Arab waterway between the two countries that leads into the Gulf. Iran and Iraq had clashed over the waterway in the early 1970s, but reached an agreement in 1975. Now, the fall of the Shah, the new Islamic government's antagonism to the US, and its subsequent purges of Iran's armed forces all suggested that Iran might be weak. The result was an opportunistic attack on 22 September 1980 that Saddam hoped would topple the Iranian government, enlarge Iraq's oil reserves, and establish his leadership in the Gulf and wider Arab world.

The Iraqi air force attacked ten airfields but failed to destroy the Iranian air force on the ground. The next day, Iraq launched a ground invasion along a 650-km (400-mile) front, with four divisions crossing Iran's southern border, to besiege Khorramshahr and Abadan, one division invading in the centre to block a potential Iranian invasion route, and another division in the north to protect the Iraqi oil compex at Kirkul.

Stalemate
The Iraqi invasion soon stalled in the face of vigorous, if disorganized, Iranian resistance. Iran retaliated with air strikes against targets in Iraq, including oil installations and their capital, Baghdad. Its air force quickly gained air superiority, while the Iraqis did not  have enough bombers to be effective against a country the size of Iran. Saddam's hopes that opponents of the Ayatollah's government would rise against it were dashed, as Iranian nationalism led people to rally round their government and resist the Iraqis, not welcome them.

An Iranian counterattack in March 1982 recovered lost territory, and Iraq withdrew its forces in June, agreeing to a Saudi Arabian plan to end the war. Iran refused to compromise, however, insisting on the removal of Saddam from power. In July its forces crossed the Iraqi border and headed for Basra. They were met by a vastlyincreased Iraaqi army - approaching one million strong - and entrenched in formidable border defenses, who repelled the attack with coordinated small arms and artillery fire and by the use of gas, a regular feature of the Iraqi war effort. In 1984 Iraq launched an air bombardment of 11 Iranian cities to force the country's government into peace talks. The Iranian response against selected Iraqi cities began the first of five "wars of the cities" that took place during the conflict.

Offensives by both sides in 1985 and 1986 failed to break the stalemate, as neither side had sufficient artillery or air power to support large-scale ground advances. The rest of the war consisted of both sides bombing each other's cities and exchanging Scud missile attacks. Iraqi chemical attacks in 1988 against Kurdish targets in both Iran and Iraq enraged the Iranians but they did not have the means to continue the war and agreed a ceasefire on 20 August.

The pre-war territorial status quo was restored, although at the cost of perhaps a million lives and two much-weakened economies. Crucially, however, Iraq had received support from many Western and Arab countries, including funding from oil-rich Kuwait, one of its biggest creditors. In its impoverished state, Iraq looked to Kuwait to solve its problems and cancel its debts. Unwisely confident that the West would not intervene, Saddam Hussein sent his troopsto invade and occupy Kuwait on 2 August 1990.

The Gulf War
The UN imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, while the United States put together a coalition of 31 nations, including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, to liberate Kuwait. The combined ground and air forces assembled in Saudi Arabia and naval units were deployed in the Gulf. A five-week aerial bombing campaign began on 17 January 1991, when eight US AH-64 Apache and two MH-53 Pave Low helicopters destroyed Iraqi radar sites near the Saudi Arabian border.

These were just the first of more than 100,000 sorties flown over Iaq, with little loss, in which 88,500 tons of bombs were dropped, devastating the military and civilian infrastructure of Iraq. Most of the bombs were of the traditional gravity type, but smart bombs and cruise missiles were also used effectively against selected targets. More than 2,000 tons of smart bombs were dropped on Baghdad and other targets by US F-117 stealth bombers. Iraq responded by launching a number of Scud missiles against Israel in hopes of provoking Israel to retaliate - an action that Saddam trusted would peel Arab support away from the Allied coalition. Armed with supplies of American defensive missiles, however, Israel did not respond to these attacks and the coalition remained intact.

The coalition's ground campaign began on 24 February when American troops from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment entered Iraq just to the west of Kuwait. To the north, the US XVIII Airborne Corps thrust into the sparsely defended desert of southern Iraq, their left flank protected by the French Sixth Light Armored Division, their right by the British 1st Armoured Division. The advance was swifter than anticipated. Two days later Iraqi troops began to leave Kuwait, setting fire to its oil fields as they left. The long convoy retreating along the main highway to Baghdad came under intense fire in what many described as a "turkey shoot". French, British, and US troops pursued Iraqi forces out of Kuwait to within 240 km (150 miles) of Baghdad. The retreat turned into a rout, and on 28 February, after 100 hours of fighting, President George Bush declared a ceasefire.

Rebellions
At the conclusion of the First Gulf War, Shi'as in the south of Iraq and Kurdish separatists in the north both launched rebellions against Saddam, hoping they would receive support from the US. With no help forthcoming, both revolts were brutally crushed, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Kurds fleeing to Iran and Turkey. The United States, France, and Britain established no-fly zones over the north and south of the country to protect the rebel areas from possible Iraqi bombing or chemical attacks.

Postwar Iraq
UN economic sanctions imposed at the start of the First Gulf War remained in place, as Iraq was deemed to have failed to comply with UN resolutions forbidding it from developing or possessing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Weapons inspectors managed to destroy some weapons, but alleged obstruction over the issue was one of the main causes of the US-British invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As in the First Gulf War, an air campaign was followed by a brief ground offensive. This time coalition forces went all the way to Baghdad to achieve "regime change", but many aspects of the campaign were controversial and the US had fewer coalition patners than in 1990-91.